Migration-Informed Cancer Equity: A Global Perspective

Health equity is now a central aim of modern medicine, yet US cancer-prevention frameworks remain largely shaped by domestic policy histories and nationally bounded conceptions of disparity. While essential for addressing longstanding racial inequities, these frameworks often overlook malignancies driven by infection, geography, and early-life exposure-risks that are well characterized in global cancer epidemiology but imperfectly translated into domestic prevention strategies. As migration reshapes disease distribution, this misalignment leaves persistent gaps in the prevention of cancers such as gastric, liver, and cervical cancer among immigrant and diaspora populations. This perspective advances a migration-informed approach to cancer equity that integrates nativity, early-life exposure, and transnational determinants into prevention design. Using gastric cancer as a case study, we show how omission of migration-linked risk contributes to systematic under-recognition of high-risk populations in low-incidence countries, despite strong global evidence for effective prevention. Achieving meaningful cancer equity in the twenty-first century will require frameworks that extend beyond national borders and reflect how cancer risk is distributed in an increasingly mobile world.